


Autumn, Fall

by toujours_nigel



Series: Sex and Cedarwood [2]
Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bathing/Washing, Gen, increasingly AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-02-24 15:03:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2585756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I keep edging towards writing Hephaistion/Bagoas but never quite get there.</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fawatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/gifts).



I didn’t dare that room again till dawn, when the shift changed and the pages who saw me return could not be the ones who had seen me leave. It was the first night I had lain alone since I put my arms around him, and my bed felt cold and musty with the smell of disuse. I was accustomed already to the scent of cedarwood and of perfume mingled with clean sweat. I got little sleep, but clung to my bed till the cold light came creeping into my room. Then I rose and washed and dressed with care, and lingered over my paint-pots and perfumes: he had a taste for beauty embellished but not disguised. The coats he liked were too heavy for the day, but I donned my lightest linens—fine enough that the light shone through them, and a yard of cloth clutched up into my fist.

  
Still, I was early enough that only the lowliest servants were about. In front of Alexander’s chambers the new pages were looking about themselves blearily, resting their spears against the walls and rubbing sleep from their eyes. They looked to the last boy like children. One of the four had fastened me to a wooden Scythian with spears not two weeks ago. I raised my head and swept past them.

  
The door gave easily under my hand. I had waited for it with indrawn breath, and was in before I’d looked. It was all as I’d left it. Often I would come in after he’d sat the night talking to his friends, and find wine-cups on every table and the lees spilled on the floor from rounds of kottabos. But nothing had been disturbed—even the book we had been reading lay unfurled on the table: it was as though someone had laid an enchantment to hold it still. In the great bed Alexander lay sleeping under the furs and covers. Sulking, I thought delightedly, perhaps I ought have returned in the night. He always knew my step, even asleep or absorbed in his work. Well, I could coax a smile from him before the servants came to straighten out the room and bring his bath. At a thought I turned to bolt the door against interruption.

  
When I turned back he was awake and upright with the little dagger he kept beneath his pillow poised for throwing. It was Hephaistion. He stared at me, blinked slowly, and suddenly threw the dagger and himself back onto the bed, closing his eyes with a strange sort of finality.

  
“You are terribly quiet,” he said, loud over the thundering of my heart. “How long have you been there?”

  
“Only just now,” I answered, fighting to keep my voice steady. “I am sorry to disturb your rest.” I was thinking, I was a fool to expect anything else, and hard on the heels of it, I have been betrayed. I made sure to keep my eyes averted and my hands busy, setting the table into its correct place, tidying away the cushions. I thought better of putting away the book, the sight of it pierced me. Hephaistion drowsed on. I crept to the window and perched on the broad ledge, looking out upon the ocean with my fingers knotted about my knees. The gulls wheeled over the water; occasionally one would dart towards the town in search of offal, or break off from the flock and swoop to the waves after invisible fish. Their cries gave vent to my own grief.

  
In a little while he stirred, looked about, and raised himself on one elbow to stare at me. He looked more alert now, and when he spoke the words were sharper. “Alexander won’t be back for hours. He and Ptolemy went hunting or riding or Zeus forfend swimming. I’m not entirely certain, I was asleep for most of it.”

  
I said, “Yes my lord,” and looked away again. If he wanted me gone, he would have to order me out. I had as much right as he to be there; I would not be driven out by oblique hints.

  
The light came up as I watched at the window, grew warmer, rang with the noise of the bazaar below us coming to life and the palace waking at a lordlier pace. Hephaistion thrashed around, made himself comfortable, and relapsed into somnolence. I wondered that he could sleep with me in the room. It would have been a moment’s work to slip a knife into his throat, but the pages had seen me enter and would be eager to accuse me. It kept him alive and me shut up with him. I did not want to slink out again under their mocking eyes. It seemed we would be there for hours, penned in together till Alexander returned to set us free.

“Has the shift changed?” He had given up on sleep at last, with slats of light creeping across the floor and up onto the bed, into his eyes. I nodded assent, a sharp incline of the head, and trained my eyes on the dappled light. The months I had stayed with them was not enough to habituate me to the shamelessness of the Greeks, and the years since have done no more in that regard. He sighed and swore and then laughed tiredly. “I wish I could make a holiday of it as the men are doing,” he told me, as though we were friends. “But no matter. Now, will you grant me a favour?”

  
I suppose my face must have shown my surprise, because he laughed again. Certainly I looked up at him, startled. One got used to these things, but I had not expected it of him.

  
“Nothing impossible or humiliating,” he promised. “You’ve had your share of that, eh? No, simply go to the boys at the door and ask for Xanthos. If he isn’t there someone will fetch him. That’s all.”

  
As I made my way out I saw him cross to the window and lean out of it, hip-shot. He looked correct among the antique things in a way Alexander never did: my lord looked startling, like a gold daric found in a slag-heap, bright and new and terrifying. Hephaistion looked nearly Persian, with his long limbs and shining bronze hair and solemn face; he was only Greek to the eye in his lack of beard and shame.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep edging towards writing Hephaistion/Bagoas but never quite get there.

The pages were wider awake now, and as I came out of the chambers one of them elbowed another and smiled. The heavy door must have muffled their laughter when I had gone in. Still, I had a duty before me and that made it easier.

I asked, “Is one among you Xanthos?”

One among them, whom I had never seen leering at me, nor participating in the cruel sport his peers made of me, straightened from his slouch by the wall. At a guess he was my age or a little older, but to look him in the eye I would have had to tip back my head. I spoke instead to the jut of his collar-bone. “Your presence is requested,” I managed, and stumbling a little from ignorance of the title, “by Hephaistion.”

He nodded sharply, and set spear and shield against the wall. “I shall attend upon him directly,” he said, and putting actions at odds with words pelted down the long passage and away.

The boy who had laughed, who had thrown spears at me, said, “He must fetch a replacement to stand his shift. Go and give the general his reply.”

I did not want to go into the room that had held my only happiness and watch him in simple ownership of it. But what hatred there was, was subtler than the blind refusal of these boys, my only peers. I had never had time to be a boy, that was the trouble. Since I was ten my only refuge had been among grown men, who treated me on most days with an indifferent indulgence; better I had found with Alexander, worse I had tried for years to forget.

 

Within Hephaistion was pacing the room in a lion’s prowl. They must have learnt it together from some teacher or father, or early learnt it one from the other, as children will pick up affectations with childhood games. He had dressed, at least, though it was still a trial to look at the rumpled bed. Last night I had, and then he. I had been a fool to think any King would keep to one lover.

“My lord,” I said, when he had glanced my way and then towards the table with its open book, “your page will soon be here.” He looked surprised by that, and I hastened to add, “Xanthos. He was on duty, but has run to fetch a replacement. Their sleeping-quarters are not so far.”

“You did well,” he allowed, as though I were a child seeking approval. “I shall surrender the room to you soon.”

My Greek is better now than it was in those days, but it seemed to me that he had placed some greater emphasis on the word _surrender_. To a soldier it could not help be a word that rankled, and he could have avoided it with ease. When I looked at him he was smiling, not to hide himself, but as though he did not care who saw it. After a moment, he said, “Are you reading about Cyrus?”

“Yes, my lord.”

I did not want him to touch the book, but he sat at the table and went over it carefully, as sober as a scholar. It had never been mine, but the last hands that touched it had been _his_. “Alexander has had this since we were young,” he said, putting it away at last. “I had thought it mislaid, but out it came when we were in Egypt. He had carried it from Macedon in his saddlebags. Is it a true book?”

“In what it imparts of court etiquette it is, and where it goes wrong I have told him the truth.”

“I wasn’t testing you,” he said mildly. “Xenophon was a mercenary in a foreign land, still thinking the rules of Athens held good. All this guff about taking noble boys and putting them in training together, is that true?”

“No, my lord. My father would have trained me when I came of age. The King said it is the same in Greece.”

“In Macedon, at least. In Sparta they do as Xenophon reports of Persia. You are of an age now.”

Always, he had spoken to me as to any other boy in the royal household. I tried to keep before me the intrinsic kindness of this; but I was even more aware than I wished to be of its unconscious cruelty. It had not been two weeks. I said quickly, “Eunuchs are rarely taught those arts, my lord.”

“Your famous namesake rode to war. Come, we know something at least of your military if nothing else. And even women ought to know how to ride and which end of a dagger pierces flesh.”

“I am not a woman, and I know how to ride.” I was becoming impolite, though to him it must have looked as though I was becoming less cold. These people called their king by name and argued with him in court and thought nothing of it. Still I kept my tongue behind my teeth and said nothing of how well I knew which end of a dagger pierced flesh.

“And I hear you are a dancer, so the rest of it ought to be easy enough. Open the doors, that’ll be Xanthos.”

I had heard nothing, but he was used, after all, to listening for footsteps in the din of battle and in the quiet stalk of the hunt. I padded to the door and eased it open. It was Xanthos with an armful of clothing. Behind him hovered two slaves with a copper bath.

“They looked confused, so I thought I might as well put them to good use,” the boy said. “Here, Bagoas, you know where everything goes. Now.”

Hephaistion laughed, reached a long arm out for the boy and let himself be hauled to his feet. “A bath instead of oil and a strigil? Xanthos, Xanthos, what _would_ your tutor think?”

“You’ve corrupted me,” Xanthos retorted. “He knows that already. Now, if you must be at your work while the world is on holiday…”

“Xanthos.”

“At least you need not do it with an aching head. I have called for food once you’ve bathed.”

I stood by the slaves as they set the bath down and others came to fill it with steaming water. Alexander liked it nearly scalding, emerged pink-fleshed from the bath and stayed warm to the touch. When they went I followed them to the door and no further. I had as much right as Hephaistion to be in that room, and more than the page. With each repetition that sounded less true, but there was enough in it yet to hold me. Alexander would return, or they would leave.

Hephaistion said, “I ought to clout you,” loudly, rising beyond the murmur of steam, but when I looked over he was batting away the boy divesting him of his chiton and pushing him towards the bath.

With a Persian I would have much earlier departed, rights to remain notwithstanding. On the part of any Persian this would have been an invasion, the declaration of war, as unmistakable as a kiss in full court. But Hephaistion had always been kind to me, and it was nothing to him whether I lingered by his bath. And too, I was beset with curiosity, that great sin of those who like me can only peep out at life through the chinks. I made a virtue of it in my mind, sounding out that they might have need of me and I would not have Alexander think I was discourteous to any of his guests. I showed Xanthos where the oils and perfumes were and retreated to the windows again. There was an indent upon the cushion I had left on the ledge, as though a man’s knee had pressed it out of shape.

An endless morning after a restless night. I dozed in the sun while they spoke in low voices, heads bent together to lend their incomprehensible Macedonian another guard. I would awaken, I resolved, and it would have all been a dream, and I would be in bed with Alexander, and he would tuck me into an arm and kiss my hair and know I had had bad dreams. In the morning we would go riding and I would persuade him to linger by the seashore where the horses could fairly fly over the hard-packed sand, and to put away work for another day.

 

I woke when the voices got louder and slipped in and out of Macedonian into Greek. It had not been a dream.

Hephaistion was saying, in a bell-clear voice, “He has to be taught. He’s a liability otherwise, so close to Alexander.”

“You would have a Persian sharing the King’s bed who is proficient with weapons. Tilt your head back.”

“If he turns against Alexander we’re already in more... don’t drown me. We have more trouble than from any assassin. He could stifle him any night in bed already, without needing knives or poison. If anyone got past the rest of us, and past you, who do you think Alexander would rush to protect?”

I dared not look, but doubtless Xanthos must have looked mutinous, despite the submissive murmur of “You know best.”

“I’ll speak with Ptolemy first. If he agrees then doubtless I will have this argument multiply and with Alexander himself. Now if you think I am clean enough perhaps we could work?”

“Food first,” Xanthos said mulishly. “I asked them to bring honey, it won’t be Hymettos, but it will be good, and apples, and...”

“Fattening me up will not spare you the task of teaching him how to fight,” Hephaistion said, and heaved himself out of the bath. A stand of perfumes overturned with enough of a clatter that I was forced to awaken and look towards them.

It was a mistake. I had thought of his beauty, earlier, always as less than something. His hair less fine than mine, his height less than that of most Persians, his colouring too dark for pure ivory, his mouth too stern for smiles. But taken together he was beautiful, and laughing, and so at home among the Persian splendour of the room that he looked for a moment as Darius my master must have been in his youth, and my blurred memory of the Prince Arses, whom I had seen once from a great distance during a hunt.

I lowered my eyes.


End file.
